


Casablanca

by gretazreta (Greta)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Loves Sam, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-13
Updated: 2011-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 08:04:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greta/pseuds/gretazreta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tag for 4.05.<br/>Sam thinks he knows what Dean's favorite movie is; Dean's thinking of something entirely different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Casablanca

**Author's Note:**

> This probably will make no sense at all if you haven't seen _Casablanca_. The awesome thing about that though, is, go see _Casablanca_. It's seriously as great as everyone says it is. Maybe better.

_If I was turning life into a movie I wouldn’t pick this Abbott and Costello Meet The Monster crap._  
Yeah. No, I know what you’d pick.  
No you don’t. 

**  
Dean thinks it was the summer of 94, the summer Dad was off hunting right through the month of July. No rain for forty-one days straight, days spent at the swimming hole and nights in their own place, clapboard shack on the edge of town with ten-square-foot of yard spilling weeds over onto cracked asphalt. Evenings, Sam never seemed to take his nose out of a book, and it’s amazing to Dean even now that Sam has any eye-sight left, because he totally deserves nerd glasses as thick as coke-bottles for all the reading under the covers he’s done in his life. Those endless summer nights, it was too hot to train, too hot to sleep, too hot to do anything but lie listless on the couch and watch the television flickering in the dark.

Dean thinks it’s a sad loss to Sam’s education that he spent those same nights with Huck Finn and the Joads, instead of with the Classic Movie Channel. The guys were cool, the women were fucking fatal, beautiful and deadly, and Dean wanted to be Steve McQueen racing through the German countryside on a Triumph motorbike, Paul Newman failing to communicate, Sean Connery manacled to a freaking laser, Rod Taylor batting seagulls away from Tippy Hedren’s yellow hair. All guys like his Dad, probably difficult to live with on a day-to-day basis, but heroic through and through. Lifting the finger to the man, and doing the right thing, no matter what it cost.

Dean doesn’t have many illusions about himself, not after everything. He’s not that kind of hero, he’s just a guy with a job to do. He knows exactly how long it took for hell to break him. He knows what he’s prepared to give up, and what he can’t and won’t. 

He also knows that if his life could be a movie exactly which one he’d choose.

It’s not his favorite film ever, but it’s one that he comes back to, again and again, catching fragments on late night repeat until he can quote the whole thing, from “I came to Casablanca for the waters” to “here’s looking at you, kid.” 

There’s Bogart, first up. Rick’s all angst. He’s cool, undoubtedly - dammit, he’s _Bogart_ \- but he’s all wrapped up in his drinking and his pining for the one that got away.

Dean’s not Rick, though. He doesn’t even care that he’s not the main character in his own story. Face it, Rick’s Sam Winchester in movie idol form, the old fashioned hero, paralysed by his memories. Dean worries that Sam, like Rick, might ultimately be driven to darkness, trying to escape the past. He worries that Sam will lose himself in some sort of self-destructive spiral; that the road to hell is literally paved with Sam’s good intentions. He worries that Ingrid Bergman’s not going to show up on the doorstep and pull Sam out of his slump. He also sometimes worries that she is going to show up, and what then?

Dean, though. Dean’s the guy who keeps the hero honest. Dean’s Claude Rains: Captain Louis Renault, the French chief of police, who gambles and seduces and drinks his way through the whole film. Louis’s up for a bit of bribery and corruption and he’d be making big bucks on the credit-card scams if they were around back then. Dean could totally rock that little pussy-tickler moustache, as well, even though the one time tried to grow one his Dad took one look at it and said “what’s that on your lip, boy?” and that was that.

Dean also knows that when the plane has left the airstrip, when the Nazi officer’s lying dead at their feet and Ilsa and her resistance-leader husband are flying away into the future together, at the end, at the very end, it’ll be Dean and Sam and the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And they’re not going to Africa to fight for the resistance, they’ll be off to Wichita or Arkansas or Rhode Island to whack a poltergeist or a chocobo or a vamp: but they’ll be doing it together.

That’s the end Dean wants. Sam will save the world, and Dean will be there to pick up the pieces with a dashing one-liner, and the raising of one sardonic eyebrow. And then they’re going to walk off into the mist, together, roll credits. Just like that.

**

Sam’s got that barely-stifled grin going on, like he thinks he _knows_ and Dean’s suddenly certain that Sam’s not going to get it. 

Sam, predictably, doesn’t.

"Porkies 2."

He really totally doesn’t.

It hurts more than it should, because yeah, Sam, Dean’s all about the underage booty and high-school pranks. He’s gone to hell for what he loves, for Sam, and he’s been raised up again from there by a creature of legend and power. Nothing’s the same, neither of them is the same and he supposes he should be glad that Sam still sees him the same way, but he’s not. Not really.

He blinks and manages a “lucky guess,” and watches Sam’s half-smile blossom into a full-on grin. When it comes down to it, if it’s what makes Sam happy, Dean will sing Bon Jovi, drink himself unconscious, eat giant pretzels, and always, always choose “scissors.” 

Because if their life is a movie, they’re only just past intermission. Dean has to just keep looking out for Sam, wait until the moment when the sidekick takes centre stage and sends off his men to round up the usual suspects. 

Dean’s waiting for the moment when Rick looks at Louis and realises what he’s been missing all these years: that there’s more to him than gambling and women and alcohol. That he’s a hero too, in his own way. That they’re more similar than he realised. That they’re meant to be together. That they _belong_.

The sun is beating down, and Dean rides shotgun, slumps down in his seat and pulls his sunglasses over his eyes. Sam’s humming tunelessly under his breath, and the air smells of crisp apples and bonfire smoke. 

Sam will work things out, eventually. There’s at least a couple more acts to go.

* end * 

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably meta disguised as a story, for which I apologise. But really? Porkie’s 2? No freaking way.  
> Written (according to my computer) in April 2011. Not sure I ever posted it, but backing up here nonetheless.
> 
> It's also perhaps worth noting, Rick says of Captain Renault “he’s just like any other man, only more so” = just like Dean Winchester, really. And Sam, for that matter.


End file.
